Is Kiro Free? 50 Credits a Month, a Free Student Year and Pro at $20

Simple prompts can cost under one credit; spec tasks usually cost more

A credit is Kiro's unit of agent work, metered to two decimal places. Kiro says a simple prompt can cost less than one credit, while a complex one, such as executing a spec task, usually costs more. Vibe and spec prompts, spec refinement, task execution and agent hooks all spend credits. The model sets the rate: Kiro prices each one as a multiple of Auto, and the Free-tier models run from 0.05x for Qwen3 Coder Next and 0.15x for MiniMax M2.1, through 0.25x for DeepSeek 3.2 and MiniMax M2.5 and 0.5x for GLM-5, to 1.3x for Claude Sonnet 4.5. At the listed multipliers (ToolColumn arithmetic), Free's 50 credits cover as many requests as about 1,000 Auto credits if every request runs on Qwen3 Coder Next, which Kiro marks experimental, but only about 38 Auto credits' worth on Sonnet 4.5; Kiro notes that real use per task also depends on how many tokens a model generates and how deeply it reasons.

Free covers the Kiro IDE and CLI. Kiro Web, cloud sessions, the iOS app preview and API-key sign-in for CI/CD need Pro or higher, and no plan may be routed through third-party automation harnesses such as OpenClaw.

Every paid plan works out to $0.02 a credit; add-ons cost $0.04

The per-credit column is ToolColumn arithmetic: each plan's monthly price divided by its credits.

A bigger plan buys more credits, not cheaper ones, so choose the plan that covers a normal month. Add-on credits, sold on paid plans in packs from $5 for 125 to $100, cost twice the plan rate: in ToolColumn arithmetic, a month that needs 2,000 credits costs $40 on Pro+ but $60 on Pro plus 1,000 add-on credits. Add-ons do roll over for 12 months, while plan credits reset monthly, so they suit a month that runs over now and then. Prices exclude tax. Free exists only for individual sign-ins: Kiro Enterprise and AWS GovCloud have no Free tier, and GovCloud prices run about 20% higher.

A first upgrade to Pro is free for the rest of that month

Since November 1, 2026, a first upgrade from Free to Pro makes the rest of that month free, and any first upgrade adds 500 trial credits that last 12 months and are spent after your plan credits; plan fees and credits are prorated to the second. In Kiro's own example, upgrading to Pro at midnight UTC on the 15th of a 30-day month leaves 16 days: the prorated $10.67 is covered by the free month, so you pay nothing and get 533 plan credits plus the 500 trial credits. Starting on Pro+, Pro Max or Power instead, you pay only the difference from the prorated Pro price, $10.67 for Pro+ in the same example. The upgrade needs a credit card and the free month applies once; if you drop back to Free, leftover trial credits work only on free-tier models.

Students get a free year of 1,000 credits a month; startups can get Pro+ credits

Students aged 18 or older at eligible universities get 12 months of 1,000 credits a month with premium models and Kiro Web, after a one-time SheerID check with a university email and no credit card. There are no overages: at 1,000 credits you wait for the next month, and after the year the account moves to Kiro Free. For a limited time, early-stage to Series A startups can apply for up to a year's worth of Pro+ credits on an AWS account, not a Builder ID, GitHub or Google sign-in; when the credits run out the account moves to standard Pro+ billing, and startups with active AWS Activate credits cannot apply.

Teams pay the same $20 a seat for half the credits

Teams of two or more buy credit-pooling seats through an AWS account instead of individual plans, and pooling works only with Kiro profiles on AWS IAM Identity Center. Each $20 seat adds 500 credits a month to a shared pool, half of what $20 buys on Pro, so a pooled credit costs $0.04 in ToolColumn arithmetic; the trade is that heavy users can draw on credits light users leave. Admins can add pool credits at $0.04 that last 12 months, set limits per user or group and get alerts at 80% and 100% of use. Unused included pool credits expire at the end of each month.

Only paid plans get AWS's IP indemnity for generated code

For commercial work, the difference between Free and paid is protection. AWS gives paid Kiro subscribers an output indemnity against third-party IP claims over generated code, but its Service Terms exclude Kiro Free Tier. The cover also never applies to Kiro Excluded Models: Kimi K3 and every model marked experimental, which today includes Qwen3 Coder Next, MiniMax M2.1 and DeepSeek 3.2.

AWS may train on Free and individual accounts unless you opt out

Kiro Free and paid individual accounts follow the same data rule: AWS may use your prompts, other inputs and the code Kiro generates to improve the service, including for model training, unless you opt out in Kiro's settings. A Free account's inputs can also be kept for up to 60 days for abuse detection, even after opting out. Content from Kiro enterprise accounts is not used for service improvement.